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TwoWitToWoo

The Department has developed an electronic individualised database of primary school pupils, called the Primary Online Database (POD). POD will collect individual information on each pupil, including their PPSN. This has been thoroughly piloted with a selection of schools and has been extensively discussed with the education partners and management bodies.

We acknowledge that the move to the new POD database will be challenging and an additional body of work for schools in the short term, but are confident that in the course of time this work will bring significant benefits for schools and allow for the reduction and streamlining of requests for data from schools.

In the near future, POD will

replace the need for schools to complete the National School Annual Census,

replace the need for schools to maintain the Clárleabhar,

facilitate inter-school transfers,

facilitate the transfer of data from primary to post-primary schools,

identify pupils who do not make the transition from primary to post-primary,

allow schools to update DES centrally-held, school-level data such as School Name, Address and Telephone Number. This will provide schools with one point to correct or amend contact details which will then be available to be accessed by all areas across the Department.

In the longer term it is proposed that POD will also share data with the Department of Social Protection, the HSE and the NCSE, and other bodies, eliminating the need for many of the current data requests to schools from these bodies, for example in relation to vaccination programmes, child benefit claims, application for special educational needs.

Please follow the link provide here to find out more about this development.